Cook This: Deep Fried Empanada Puto Bumbong

If ever there was a season to eat puto bumbong, Christmas would be it. At barrio fiesta-themed family dinners, there is nothing like digging into a sticky puto bumbong in marginally colder-than-usual weather, especially after feasting on pancit, lumpia, lechon, and white rice soaked in your go-to sawsawan combination.

Leftover puto bumbong can be a pain to reheat when taking out the steamer seems like more trouble than you can handle, with 5 pounds of holiday padding weighing you down. So instead, we decided to just roll up that puto bumbong into a crispy Ilocos-style empanada wrap and drop it into a vat of hot oil. Deep fried anything is our holiday-hangover cure, but this concoction takes it to another level while not allowing food to go to waste!

The recipe includes instructions on how to make puto bumbong from scratch if your family could not hold back on their sweets last night.

Deep Fried Empanada Puto Bumbong

Yield: 5 piecesTime: 45 minutes

Ingredients: Puto Bumbong

½ cup glutinous rice flour

¼ tsp salt

1 cup sweet potato, boiled and mashed

½ tsp ube flavour

½ cup water

margarine, as needed

niyog, as needed

muscovado, as needed

Ingredients: Empanada dough

1½ cups glutinous rice flour

⅛ tsp orange food coloring

½ cup water

1 tbsp oil

Ingredients: Garnish

niyog, as needed

muscovado, as needed

500ml oil

Procedure: Puto Bumbong

Mix rice flour, salt, and mashed kamote together till it makes a smooth but dry dough.

Mix ube flavoring and water together and combine with the rice flour and kamote mixture.

Place in a heavy bottomed non-stick pan over low heat, mixing constantly. Add the Margarine.

Cook until color changes and the taste of raw flour is gone.

Shape into tubes using wax paper.

Procedure: Empanada Dough

Mix all ingredients together and knead till it forms a smooth ball.

Procedure: Assembly

Pre-heat oil in a pot making sure it only comes ½ the way to the brim.

Roll out a tablespoon of dough between 2 oiled sheets of wax paper till it forms a disc about a mm thick.

Place about 2 tablespoons of puto, 1 tsp of niyog and 1tsp of muscovado in the flattened dough.

Bea Osmeña is a healthy-ish eater who is just as likely to take you to a vegan joint as she is to consume a whole cheese pie to herself. A former picky eater, Bea has discovered the joys of savory fruit dishes, but still refuses to accept pineapples on her pizza. On the rare occasion you catch her without food in her mouth, you are likely to find her looking at books she can't afford, hugging trees, or talking to strange animals on the street.